Page 35 of The Atonement
“Of course it isn’t a setup.” I scoffed, waving a hand around the garage.
She raised the stun gun to the space just in front of my neck. “Prove it.”
I swallowed. “How would you like me to prove it?”
“Say you’re a murderer.”
“I’m a murderer,” I repeated, keeping my eyes trained on the metal prongs in front of me.
“Say your name and what you’ve done.”
“I’m Peter Greenburg. I’ve…I’ve killed loads of people. Women, mostly. Men too, lately.” My eyes flicked up from the weapon to meet hers. “I’m a bad, bad man. Happy?”
She hesitated, but eventually lowered the pink weapon. Was its color meant to be so misleading? If you just saw it out of the corner of your eye, it could’ve been a makeup box or a bottle of perfume from her dresser.
With the weapon tucked safely back in her arms, she narrowed her gaze at me. “Make no mistake about it, Peter, I wanted to do much more than hurt you. If it wasn’t for your little escape hatch, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.”
I clicked my tongue, my cheek drawing inward with smug disbelief. I couldn’t help myself. I was beginning to feel sure I’d been right. “See, I don’t think that’s the case.”
“What are you talking about?” she sneered.
“Ainsley, you’re the most competent woman I know. You’re always, always one step ahead of me. You fix things. You don’t make mistakes. I’ve tried to think, but…I can’t think of a single time where I recall you making a mistake. Not ever. You’re…calculating. Meticulous. You think everything through ten ways to Sunday—”
“Six ways.”
“What?”
“It’s six ways to Sun…” she said halfheartedly. “Doesn’t matter. What’s your point?”
“My point is… Why would you mess up thisonething?” I held up a finger. “Probably the most important thing you’ve ever had to do? Why would you let even a tiny little possibility of me escaping slip under your radar?”
“I couldn’t have known about the other door.”
“But you still knew there might be a way. Why would you leave it to chance?” I studied her, watching for a confirmation in her eyes. Her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. “You wouldn’t,” I filled in. “You wouldn’t. Not if you actually wanted it done. If you wanted me to be dead, I’d be dead, Ainsley. There’s no doubt in my mind. You killed Joanna. You killed Jim.”
“It was different—”
“Because they meant nothing to you, and…because you love me.”
Her eyes widened as if I’d slapped her. The tension in the room was thick, my words hanging in the air between us.
“You’re delusional…” She stroked her arm as a means of self-comfort.
“If you wanted me dead, you wouldn’t have knocked me out and set the house on fire and hoped for the best. You’re too thorough for that. You’d have sliced my throat and watched me bleed out. You’d have checked for a pulse. You’d have buried me in the backyard and washed the blood off of every surface.” I shook my head. “See, I’ve gone over it every way there is, and it just doesn’t make sense. Unless—”
“You’re insane, Peter. What you’re saying is ridiculou—”
“Unless you didn’t do it because you didn’t actually want to kill me in the first place. You wanted to scare me. Punish me. Fair enough. But, honey, you don’t leave anything to chance. You didn’t kill me because…because you couldn’t. Plain and simple. Because you didn’t want me to die. Because…” I drew out the words, stepping closer to her. “Because…you…love…me.”
I jolted again, my body on fire with electricity—true electricity—as she shoved the stun gun back into what felt like the exact same place on my stomach. The attack was quicker this time. Just a pulse.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Peter. I didn’t kill you because I needed to give the kids answers. If I buried you in the woods, I’d have to tell them youran off somewhere. I needed a body. I needed a finale. I needed it to all be over.”
“It isn’t over, Ains. Don’t you see that? We get to start fresh now. We get to fix this. And I don’t care how many times you shock me”—I checked to be sure she wasn’t planning to test that vow—“I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not changing my mind. Love me or kill me, those are your only options.”
She was silent for a moment, then her jaw began to quiver. At first, I thought maybe she was going to start crying, but instead, I saw pure rage in her eyes. “You don’t get to do that.”
“I just did.”
